Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

The afflicted man’s chest rose and fell like a poorly working bellows that couldn’t manage to find an adequate breath of salvation or preservation; he gulped air hungrily, and exhaled furtively and imperceptively like a tire leaking air; however quickly and noticeably he inhaled, his exhalation was indeterminable to the same degree.

One could hardly recognize this wheezing anatomy as a human torso — reduced to its most basic functions, rising and falling in its own inadequacy. The half-shaded light on the bedstead illuminated this mass of misery in greater clarity. Uncanny was the light of the room of the afflicted: It pointed out everything through idiosyncrasy, delineating certain objects in the foreground and others in the background. It was a light that declared, “I am awaiting a state of distinction, a zone between 102 and 104 degrees, a final threshold. That is all that I illuminate, nothing more.” But this enunciation, according to Mümtaz, existed to some degree in all the assembled objects: the bed had swollen along with the patient and had taken on his suffering. The drapes, the wardrobe mirror, the silence of the room, the tick of the clock whose pace gradually increased, and all else demonstrated what a bizarre, mean, rough-going passage the interstice between 102 and 104 constituted — leading from the manifest to arcana, from a numeric quantity to zilch, and from cognizance to absolute inertia.

Here reigned a sultanate. Over a period of nine days, this sultanate had been established in the corpus of the man lying here, whose hands twitched as they’d never before done in the normal atmosphere of 98.6 degrees, who sought oxygen to cool his lungs at the altitude of his ascent only by incessantly working his chest, his drawn lips waiting before countryside fountain spouts through which water hadn’t gushed for years, lips chapped like the earth longing for one burst of water and serenity, with eyes that regurgitated light, with a face that receded from within, a man of affliction whose very being declared, “I’m no longer what I once was!” In the course of nine days, he’d been removed from his old self, from resembling others, and had been relegated to the margins of existence, where only if one paid close attention could one discern his astonishing slow and steady metamorphosis.

What remained in this room of the man he used to know? Besides the suffering of his material being, practically nothing. Not even the light in his eyes was a sign of a life recognizably human. Any material object catching any reflection would elicit this much luminance, Mümtaz decided. But no, the eyes of ailing İhsan shone differently. It was as if İhsan could still read Mümtaz’s thoughts from the limits of extremity he occupied. Why do I always succumb to pessimism like this? Why am I this cowardly? he thought, and leaned toward İhsan to speak. But the man of affliction closed his eyes when Mümtaz took up his hands; he didn’t want to speak. Silence of the ephemeral. Silence the likes of which he hadn’t experienced before.

One couldn’t call this silence, either, because the table clock churned as if all had been relinquished to its command.

With gradually increasing momentum, the clock marked another time, one between zaman that could be considered external to humanity and the intrinsic zaman of human existence; the time of a being that had traversed half the road, of a terrible metamorphosis that would conclude shortly in a single lunge. The clock represented, if not the exact hour of this abstraction, an impending metamorphosis — a shedding of human skin, the approach of death.

This was a time that had internalized the metamorphosis of a larva into a chrysalis and of a chrysalis into a butterfly, a time that had established such rhythm that it was regulated internally. This was that strain of time. What difference was there between the one who lay here tonight and the creatures that changed character and form this way?

İhsan opened his eyes; he wet his lips as much as his strength allowed. Mümtaz gave him water with a teaspoon, then leaned downward, happy that he’d been delivered from this nightmare, and asked, “How are you, Ağabey ?”

With his hand İhsan made a gesture that might mean anything. Then, as if reluctant to make any determination about his state, he rolled his tongue in his mouth with difficulty to inquire, “How are you?” He stopped. He attempted to pull himself up but failed. His chest constricted. His hands hastened their tremors. His face reddened as if he were choking.

“Let’s call a doctor, Mümtaz. I’m afraid.”

Mümtaz knew that tonight was a fateful night. But he hadn’t guessed that the crisis would be so severe. He gazed at İhsan’s worsening condition in genuine surprise. Frightening possibilities collided in his mind. What if something should happen while I’m gone?

Stunned, he imagined how he might act with the physician. That dourfaced neighborhood doctor, whom he disliked, passed before his eyes. All the others, the ones that he knew, were off on vacation. Could they be blamed? Would he himself have been here in the midst of the sweltering season had it not been for this illness? Before his eyes, the diamond-spire road from Vaniköy to Kandilli came to life through the lights of fishing boats, the shimmering of stars, through the sounds of birds and bugs, just like those visions that were pure sparkle and a palette of colors reflected on the panes of grand yalı windows with shades drawn at night; Mümtaz — in the event of a turn for the worse — could see himself plodding along this well-lit Bosphorus road with a doctor who would be of no use.

He understood that his imagination, despite such terrible possibilities, still existed in another dimension and that a majority of it was only occupied with Nuran. He stood, ashamed of himself and his selfishness. Macide knew how to administer injections. But how could he entrust her with such a difficult task? He looked at İhsan writhing in a fit of breathlessness. Macide brushed aside Mümtaz’s hesitation.

Standing, she said, “I’ll give the injection.” This was a Macide with whom he wasn’t familiar, a ghastly pale woman who dispelled every objection with intense eyes, who’d decided to rescue her husband, and by making this decision, vanquished all doubts in her mind. Mümtaz bared İhsan’s arm, and Macide, to avoid losing time, simply swabbed the tip of the needle with alcohol before attaching it to the syringe and holding it to the half-light. . After, as if she couldn’t believe her own eyes, she indicated the ministered arm to Mümtaz.

Mümtaz saw a thin trail of blood on the broad athletic form of İhsan’s arm tracing a path over his still suntanned skin. With a stunned expression, İhsan’s mother stared in horror at what had occurred. She had no stomach for medical interventions. But İhsan had responded to the shot, and had relaxed.

“Please, Mümtaz, call a doctor.”

Had Nuran or his aunt said this? Nuran was far away. She had no inkling of the fear and apprehension that reigned in this house. She’d be heading to İzmir tomorrow. Maybe she was now busy preparing her bags. Or perhaps she was at home conversing with Fâhir, making plans for the future.

He stood within the bizarre and disorienting understanding of one who has slipped out of a dream. The threadlike trail of blood had disconcerted him. But what was blood after all? Something we all carried in our bodies by the pint.

“Do you think it’s an absolute necessity?”

Macide concurred with her mother-in-law.

“To be safe,” she said. Mümtaz walked toward the door to get the physician.

Calling for a doctor was de rigueur. Whether the patient was improving or not, the doctor must be summoned. Neither life nor its doppelgänger death could take place without a doctor. Death, in particular. . In today’s world it was all but shameful to die without the presence of a doctor. This only happened on battlefields, when people died en masse by the thousands and tens of thousands. For death was quite costly. But at times its price would drop and it’d become available to one and all.